Blackie is still on her 3 week vitamin K treatment in case she ingested some of the Havoc rat poison. So far she seems fine and is eating well. The vet says that bleeding from rat poison may not show up for several days to a week which will be Monday. I just could kick myself for not watching her more closely when she ran into the greenhouse. As I stated in my earlier post, I normally only use the bait under the house in the wintertime when my resident snake Fred is hibernating for when mice start looking for a warm place to stay for the winter and use traps in areas where the dogs roam. Blackie has caught her nose a couple of times.

I made a trip to Montgomery Wednesday for a couple of days for a bio-threat conference with the health department. Mom gave Blackie her vitamin K while I was gone. On the way back I stopped at Petals from the Past in Jemison Al, off of exit 219 in Jemison, just south of Birmingham. I bought three figs trees, O’Rourke, Lemon and Tiger. The O’Rourke was to replace a small one I bought last year that died. For some reason it was the only one I neglected to mulch for the winter. The Lemon (a/k/a Blanche Italian Honey Marseilles Heritage) is an old Southern favorite, a medium-to-large fig and is an old, reliable variety in the South. The skin is yellowish green, and the flesh is white to amber. It is very sweet with a lemon flavor. It has a medium to large greenish-yellow fig with white pulp and many seeds with a sweet and delicate flavor and with a nutty texture from the soft seeds. The Tiger has striped and stippled green and yellow figs. The crimson flesh turns to jam as the fruit ripens and this brings out the strawberry/orange flavors. It only gets 3 feet tall in containers, so it should be a good addition to my Auburn or Deshler tiger garden zones. They had a large selection of other figs in addition to the ones I picked up which was a nice change from the Brown Turkey fig most places carry. I already had the Celeste, LSU, Green Ischia, and Alma; all which taste so much better than the Brown Turkey.

In addition to the figs, I picked up several ferns, Japanese beech fern, Arborvita, Antartic tree. I also picked up a couple of Japanese iris I didn’t have, a Hardy Gloxinia, Wine & Roses Weigela (burgundy foliage), Jacob Cline and Marshall’s Delight mondara which the hummingbirds will like. I have a un-impressive lavender one that overwhelmed and choked out the Marshall’s Delight and the hummingbirds don’t like it very well. It’ll be history soon.

I have several oriental and Asiatic lilies in bloom right now. With so many daylilies in bloom, I’ll do a separate post for the lilies.